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Your dream binocular (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter Zory
- Start date
I know, but it's the only multiple-magnification binocular I know of that isn't complete garbage, so I was curious as to what étudiant was referring to.
As to my dream binoculars, they would actually be quadnoculars, two of the barrels holding a decent 1" sensor each so they can record stereoscopic video and stills at the same time as the optical view. Parallax shouldn't be an issue at normal binocular viewing distances.
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I would love some new 8x60 "marine" waterproof porro made to WX top quality level. I actually think there would be a market for it.
So many mainstream mid level brand binos have become so expensive these days. I think it would be wise to spend just twice as much for some truly lasting eternal quality product with superior performance beyond the crowds. Not everything needs to be lightweight. Not everybody needs to watch insects or his toes. We need robust truly maxed out top-instruments again.
About like this for starters if this link is permitted:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/589901-custom-made-2-70ed-binoculars-poor-mans-wx/
So many mainstream mid level brand binos have become so expensive these days. I think it would be wise to spend just twice as much for some truly lasting eternal quality product with superior performance beyond the crowds. Not everything needs to be lightweight. Not everybody needs to watch insects or his toes. We need robust truly maxed out top-instruments again.
About like this for starters if this link is permitted:
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/589901-custom-made-2-70ed-binoculars-poor-mans-wx/
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chris6
Well-known member
Joachim,
I noticed that you mentioned the digicam which reminded me that I recently started to use a £160 Panasonic TZ70, a tiny but excellent 'travel camera' weighing 250 gms, to try to identify individuals in my teams of roller pigeons. The idea is to spot which is performing correctly while in flight, which has been hard to do when using various binoculars up to 12x50.
Unlike most cameras of this size the TZ70 has a small but high definition electronic viewfinder with 30x stabilised optical zoom and has already given remarkable results, both with video and with still images (which can also be extracted from any suitable 'footage').
The stabilisation is very effective and when viewed later on PC the images have proved more useful than binoculars, but while filming there is enough to do just to follow the team in the viewfinder! For static targets, live viewing with the extra zoom range is great.
I have a couple pairs. Most notable that come to mind are the Leica Geovid 15x56 with laser rangefinder for poking around terrestrial targets and for astronomy, I'd like the Vixen BT 126SS and a collection of the finest eyepieces for it. Binocular vision definitely beats monocular, but sadly, this route is exceedingly expensive for astronomical use. Guess my 25x Steiners will have to do unless I hit the lottery. 😁
Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
Sent from my SM-G935T using Tapatalk
edwincjones
Well-known member
dream? twice as good, half the price
otherwise I already have them
edj
otherwise I already have them
edj
Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
It's inexplicable and nearly insane that image stabilization, for starters, hasn't been part of every single major binocular manufacturer's line for at least the past decade.
If a company with the kind of capacity for R&D that Apple has were to take an interest in binoculars, it would have unpredictable effects on the market. But it would certainly smash the oligarchy of the Big Three + Nikon, and leave behind a healthier ecosystem for innovation. Direct-to-consumer binoculars have already shown how high the alpha makers' profit margins are, and how much more they could be doing to lead in this field.
It's shocking how little Leica, Swarovski, and Zeiss have tried since the early 1970s to reimagine their offerings. Gerold Dobler's visions from late in the last century are still on the leading edge, only now they're being implemented at Zeiss instead of Swarovski. Field-flattening lenses are not some new invention. The whole culture of sport optics is visibly far too comfy and incestuous.
That nearly all binoculars still lack image stabilization—when for several years now even most mobile phones have had it—is only the most obvious index of this deep, damaging complacency.
I don't mention Apple at random: it's clear that when the revolution does come to optics, it will be digital. Zoom, stabilization, recording and playback, slow motion, low light performance—all of it impatiently awaits an inventive approach to incorporating CCDs and displays into a new viewing device, a device that may no longer be called a binocular but will be able to replace it.
I think if Jony Ive were a birdwatcher, or were persuaded to become one, the first such devices would already exist.
If a company with the kind of capacity for R&D that Apple has were to take an interest in binoculars, it would have unpredictable effects on the market. But it would certainly smash the oligarchy of the Big Three + Nikon, and leave behind a healthier ecosystem for innovation. Direct-to-consumer binoculars have already shown how high the alpha makers' profit margins are, and how much more they could be doing to lead in this field.
It's shocking how little Leica, Swarovski, and Zeiss have tried since the early 1970s to reimagine their offerings. Gerold Dobler's visions from late in the last century are still on the leading edge, only now they're being implemented at Zeiss instead of Swarovski. Field-flattening lenses are not some new invention. The whole culture of sport optics is visibly far too comfy and incestuous.
That nearly all binoculars still lack image stabilization—when for several years now even most mobile phones have had it—is only the most obvious index of this deep, damaging complacency.
I don't mention Apple at random: it's clear that when the revolution does come to optics, it will be digital. Zoom, stabilization, recording and playback, slow motion, low light performance—all of it impatiently awaits an inventive approach to incorporating CCDs and displays into a new viewing device, a device that may no longer be called a binocular but will be able to replace it.
I think if Jony Ive were a birdwatcher, or were persuaded to become one, the first such devices would already exist.
Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
On the other hand, it’s nearly as likely that Ive would become a collector of ancient Leitz 7x35s, admiring them for their handfeel and air of quintessence, and ending up as hostile to the technologization of sport optics as anyone.
It may be that change will only arrive through a less aesthetically-minded market segment than birders, which I suppose means hunters. I think low-light performance without big apertures could be the ‘killer app’ that pushes all of this forward, since IS alone hasn’t been enough.
By the way, is there any consensus among birdwatching Canon IS owners about which binoculars they use most and would recommend most readily to others (if the 10x42s are left out of it)?
It may be that change will only arrive through a less aesthetically-minded market segment than birders, which I suppose means hunters. I think low-light performance without big apertures could be the ‘killer app’ that pushes all of this forward, since IS alone hasn’t been enough.
By the way, is there any consensus among birdwatching Canon IS owners about which binoculars they use most and would recommend most readily to others (if the 10x42s are left out of it)?
It is a business decision on the manufacturers part.
More companies would make image stabilized binoculars if they could sell them and make a profit doing it. So far only Canon has made a variety of them.
Nikon made 2 and discontinued both of them: 12x32 VR StabilEyes and 14x40 VR StabilEyes
https://www.nikonsportoptics.com/en...t-archive/binoculars/stabileyes-14x40-vr.html
Bob
More companies would make image stabilized binoculars if they could sell them and make a profit doing it. So far only Canon has made a variety of them.
Nikon made 2 and discontinued both of them: 12x32 VR StabilEyes and 14x40 VR StabilEyes
https://www.nikonsportoptics.com/en...t-archive/binoculars/stabileyes-14x40-vr.html
Bob
Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
I can’t help thinking that if an alpha maker with the budget and patience to do it in a less clunky way were to introduce IS as an everyday aspect of one of their binocular lines, the response would be overwhelming, and the world would never be the same.
I say this simply because no one who’s used IS binoculars fails to have a ‘Mother Of God! Why Don’t All Binoculars Work This Way?’ moment, exactly analogous to the way Steve Jobs felt when first seeing the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC.
Because of that, I honestly think it’s inevitable that all binoculars *will* work that way someday. I’m just trying to discern the path to getting there. The tail-bitingly timid refinements, amazing margins, and lack of platform innovation by the alpha makers, who alone have the cash and clout to lead this market someplace new, make them seem more like a blockage than leaders in getting there.
I would guess the current situation suits them well. But we’ve had 50 years without any huge qualitative disruptions. It’s not because sport optics are unimprovable. It’s because it’s arguably gotten to be more like wine-tasting, with considerable passion expended on qualities that you can assert, with perfect plausibility, are perceptible to you but not to another user. While real change is unmistakable.
Sometimes I worry we’ve drifted into becoming like stereophiles before the CD, pooh-poohing the very notion of improvement. There were reasons to prefer vinyl, but accurate sound reproduction wasn’t one of them.
I guess I feel strongly about this! Please forgive my going on. I just can’t think of many endeavors that are inherently more important than helping people see their own world more clearly, and I wish this market were dreaming even more determinedly about how to do that.
I say this simply because no one who’s used IS binoculars fails to have a ‘Mother Of God! Why Don’t All Binoculars Work This Way?’ moment, exactly analogous to the way Steve Jobs felt when first seeing the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC.
Because of that, I honestly think it’s inevitable that all binoculars *will* work that way someday. I’m just trying to discern the path to getting there. The tail-bitingly timid refinements, amazing margins, and lack of platform innovation by the alpha makers, who alone have the cash and clout to lead this market someplace new, make them seem more like a blockage than leaders in getting there.
I would guess the current situation suits them well. But we’ve had 50 years without any huge qualitative disruptions. It’s not because sport optics are unimprovable. It’s because it’s arguably gotten to be more like wine-tasting, with considerable passion expended on qualities that you can assert, with perfect plausibility, are perceptible to you but not to another user. While real change is unmistakable.
Sometimes I worry we’ve drifted into becoming like stereophiles before the CD, pooh-poohing the very notion of improvement. There were reasons to prefer vinyl, but accurate sound reproduction wasn’t one of them.
I guess I feel strongly about this! Please forgive my going on. I just can’t think of many endeavors that are inherently more important than helping people see their own world more clearly, and I wish this market were dreaming even more determinedly about how to do that.
Bob,
I don't think the Stabileyes Nikons were made by Nikon. They were twins of the Fujinons and I think that both were made by Kamakara.
They were made mainly for boating use and the stabilization is different from the Canons which are optimised for static birdwatching.
As for other manufactures not being able to make a profit, do you know that Canon don't make a profit ?. I think it is more likely to be that, in the case of the so called "alphas", they are still making binoculars using tired old designs with modifications every few years, suggesting amazing improvements and charging up to £2000. Why bother to to innovate.
Thank goodness Canon has had the capability and the will to create the best view from any current binocular with the 10x42L at £1000. It can be done, but perhaps it doesn't have the appropriate badge to show you are a birder.
Peter,
A very good synopsis of the way viewing should go. I also believe, like you, it will be digital with stabilization as a minimum. Until them the current optical Canons are a stopgap, although with the current speed of development, it could that be a long one - we shall see.
Stan
chris6
Well-known member
That seems spot on Peter, if Panasonic is on the ball I am certain they will very soon just double up on their well established zoom camera systems while providing two enlarged LCD viewfinders, leave out any other LCDs and menus except for manual or auto focussing options, and churn out some absolutely killer auto-electronic binoculars...
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Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
Chris,
What an interesting idea!
This is one way it could be done, clearly, even though it might feel a bit whirr-whirr-final-scene-of-Silence-of-the-Lambs at first, with large, motorized optical zooms. But someone simply has to invest *something* in pushing R&D in directions that wouldn't have been immediately understandable to, like, Moritz Hensoldt.
I'm not sure Zeiss's structure, run, as it is, as a foundation, will ever allow for big bets on a novel path. The Victory SF's weren't much of a risk since all the concepts had been thoroughly market-proven for a decade by Swarovski before Dobler switched alpha teams—for the second time—to tinker with them even more.
Leica does seem rich and institutionally sturdy enough to do something novel. They just seem to have no culture of being first movers, or accepting the concomitant ratio of risks to rewards. So members of the Silicon Valley ecosystem of VR / AR startups may get there first, if they care to.
The alphas, year by year, would then face rising stagnation and irrelevance, even as afficionados kept on bidding their existing products up, like mechanical watches. Possibly that's most of the future they see for themselves. But if the bottom drops out of this model, and they dwindle into shell-like 'brand partners' for other companies that are actually making new products, they won't be able to say they haven't had more time and opportunity to save themselves than anyone could have asked for.
In any event, how wonderful it will be to put the techniques being developed for VR to work in helping consumers explore 'real reality'!
Peter
What an interesting idea!
This is one way it could be done, clearly, even though it might feel a bit whirr-whirr-final-scene-of-Silence-of-the-Lambs at first, with large, motorized optical zooms. But someone simply has to invest *something* in pushing R&D in directions that wouldn't have been immediately understandable to, like, Moritz Hensoldt.
I'm not sure Zeiss's structure, run, as it is, as a foundation, will ever allow for big bets on a novel path. The Victory SF's weren't much of a risk since all the concepts had been thoroughly market-proven for a decade by Swarovski before Dobler switched alpha teams—for the second time—to tinker with them even more.
Leica does seem rich and institutionally sturdy enough to do something novel. They just seem to have no culture of being first movers, or accepting the concomitant ratio of risks to rewards. So members of the Silicon Valley ecosystem of VR / AR startups may get there first, if they care to.
The alphas, year by year, would then face rising stagnation and irrelevance, even as afficionados kept on bidding their existing products up, like mechanical watches. Possibly that's most of the future they see for themselves. But if the bottom drops out of this model, and they dwindle into shell-like 'brand partners' for other companies that are actually making new products, they won't be able to say they haven't had more time and opportunity to save themselves than anyone could have asked for.
In any event, how wonderful it will be to put the techniques being developed for VR to work in helping consumers explore 'real reality'!
Peter
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Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
Stan,
You took the words out of my mouth. When you have a market defined, and dominated, in terms of profit, by three companies that need only bicker comfortably among themselves to enjoy the same profits every year, why bother to innovate, indeed?
I don't think they're a cartel, exactly, but they're plainly something different from a market forever a-bubble with irrepressible competition.
There may be no direct incentive for them to reinvent themselves until something happens that destroys their business model all at once, possibly unfolding within the space of two or three years, when it comes.
Peter
P.S. The only thing keeping me from saving up for the Canon IS 10x42s is embarrassing, but so far impossible for me to get past: I can't stand the way they look, and that matters—matters quite legitimately, too, I think—in any consumer market on earth. I wish Leica, or anybody with any taste, really, would work with Canon on a successor. It would be an immediate success if they didn't simply try to milk it for the highest profits humanly possible, and instead saw it correctly, as the necessary long-term foundation for all their future business.
Few consumers will ever feel the same desire for the binoculars on the left they feel for the binoculars on the right. It's not because the binoculars on the right cost more to develop or manufacture.
You took the words out of my mouth. When you have a market defined, and dominated, in terms of profit, by three companies that need only bicker comfortably among themselves to enjoy the same profits every year, why bother to innovate, indeed?
I don't think they're a cartel, exactly, but they're plainly something different from a market forever a-bubble with irrepressible competition.
There may be no direct incentive for them to reinvent themselves until something happens that destroys their business model all at once, possibly unfolding within the space of two or three years, when it comes.
Peter
P.S. The only thing keeping me from saving up for the Canon IS 10x42s is embarrassing, but so far impossible for me to get past: I can't stand the way they look, and that matters—matters quite legitimately, too, I think—in any consumer market on earth. I wish Leica, or anybody with any taste, really, would work with Canon on a successor. It would be an immediate success if they didn't simply try to milk it for the highest profits humanly possible, and instead saw it correctly, as the necessary long-term foundation for all their future business.
Few consumers will ever feel the same desire for the binoculars on the left they feel for the binoculars on the right. It's not because the binoculars on the right cost more to develop or manufacture.
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jeffhosier
Well-known member
Re Peter Audrain's post.
Peter
My own sentiments precisely. I wish I could have articulated them as clearly!
I use 14 year old Swarovski bins, and whenever I look through newer models I see no real improvement that makes me want to reach for my credit card. If I'm typical, and - binophiles excluded - I suspect I am, that's not good for the alpha end of the industry. There's still going to be a need for optical excellence, but smartphone cameras show just how much clever software can compensate for pretty average optics. I reckon that unless the alpha manufacturers can embrace some of the new technology, they're heading for the same backwater occupied by audio turntables, film cameras, and mechanical watches
Jeff
I
[/QUOTE]
Peter
My own sentiments precisely. I wish I could have articulated them as clearly!
I use 14 year old Swarovski bins, and whenever I look through newer models I see no real improvement that makes me want to reach for my credit card. If I'm typical, and - binophiles excluded - I suspect I am, that's not good for the alpha end of the industry. There's still going to be a need for optical excellence, but smartphone cameras show just how much clever software can compensate for pretty average optics. I reckon that unless the alpha manufacturers can embrace some of the new technology, they're heading for the same backwater occupied by audio turntables, film cameras, and mechanical watches
Jeff
I
[/QUOTE]
Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
Jeff,
I've been watching with a mix of amazement and the rising belief that yes-this-is-absolutely-inevitable, as phones' camera software compensates for more and more features of high-end cameras, and even improves on them, despite being forced to use the tiniest, least classically adequate lenses possible.
'Computational photography' can now manipulate images—choosing the clearest parts, balancing exposures, and doing other, less obvious things—much, much faster than the human eye can see what's going on:
https://coolhunting.com/tech/apple-iphone-xs-camera-computational-photography/
It's simply incredible, and so obvious that you're right. The alphas have got to stop ignoring everything going on around them.
Peter
I've been watching with a mix of amazement and the rising belief that yes-this-is-absolutely-inevitable, as phones' camera software compensates for more and more features of high-end cameras, and even improves on them, despite being forced to use the tiniest, least classically adequate lenses possible.
'Computational photography' can now manipulate images—choosing the clearest parts, balancing exposures, and doing other, less obvious things—much, much faster than the human eye can see what's going on:
https://coolhunting.com/tech/apple-iphone-xs-camera-computational-photography/
It's simply incredible, and so obvious that you're right. The alphas have got to stop ignoring everything going on around them.
Peter
Gijs van Ginkel
Well-known member
Gentlemen,
I must have missed something, but if you take into account the different models made by the different companies from different countries in the past two decades and you compare them with earlier instruments, there have been a lot of new spectacular models and mechanical and optical improvements.
I can make a list of many , but you can do that also. And if that does not convice you: buy a Vector or one of the other new rangefinder binoculars.
Gijs van Ginkel
I must have missed something, but if you take into account the different models made by the different companies from different countries in the past two decades and you compare them with earlier instruments, there have been a lot of new spectacular models and mechanical and optical improvements.
I can make a list of many , but you can do that also. And if that does not convice you: buy a Vector or one of the other new rangefinder binoculars.
Gijs van Ginkel
Peter Audrain
Consummate Indoorsman
I have the greatest possible respect for what you say. I've found your research and insights invaluable, and hugely enjoyable.
Certainly coatings have gotten better—though the difference between the best Porro prisms 25 years ago and the best roof prisms today may not be as great as the difference between old and new roof prisms, taken on their own. Binocular bodies have been redesigned, rebalanced, lightened. Prices have fallen at the midrange. Close-focus distances have shortened. Fields of view are once again getting wider, as well as flatter and sharper, at least the top end. There's been a reassessment of the sorts of distortion that look best to actual users ….
But surely one persuasive way of reading this evidence is that there hasn't been a paradigm shift since the rise of roof prisms (if they did amount to one)—certainly not of the sort most other consumer goods have seen. And that the pace of improvement can be measured in decades, not years.
And, most suggestively, that in order to benefit from the most striking improvements, today a consumer must still spend not only as much money as ever before, but, in many cases, must actually spend more. That doesn't describe the development curve of a market undergoing rapid competitive change.
I've said it strikes me as madness that image stabilization is still a niche feature, a full twenty years after Canon started trying to make a dent in this market. But image stabilization is just one, especially dramatic expression of the wider problem. I see that problem as being inadequate R&D, little meaningful competition, overconcentration of production in a few hands—and, as a result, stagnation and a creep toward something closer to connoisseurship than invention.
I know that sounds as if I were ignorantly sweeping aside all the interesting improvements the alpha companies have made since the late '90s. I don't mean to do that. But what I am trying to say is that, though we have gotten better versions of things we had already, we haven't gotten anything undeniably new.
(Nor have the biggest price reductions at the midrange come through technological change. They've come from shifting production to lower-wage countries and shifting sales models to direct-to-consumer.)
I honestly don't believe it's a sustainable situation. I know no one with the power or inclination to change this it is listening to what we say. But if they haven't already had these thoughts themselves, or if they go on on failing to act on them, they're likely to be in irreversible trouble in less than ten years. A company content to sit tight for too long can get hollowed out at frightening speed, like Kodak, Nokia, Polaroid, BlackBerry, and other companies, now only ghosts of themselves, that until recently straddled the world.
The Vectors do look imaginative and exciting, albeit at roughly $25,000.
Certainly coatings have gotten better—though the difference between the best Porro prisms 25 years ago and the best roof prisms today may not be as great as the difference between old and new roof prisms, taken on their own. Binocular bodies have been redesigned, rebalanced, lightened. Prices have fallen at the midrange. Close-focus distances have shortened. Fields of view are once again getting wider, as well as flatter and sharper, at least the top end. There's been a reassessment of the sorts of distortion that look best to actual users ….
But surely one persuasive way of reading this evidence is that there hasn't been a paradigm shift since the rise of roof prisms (if they did amount to one)—certainly not of the sort most other consumer goods have seen. And that the pace of improvement can be measured in decades, not years.
And, most suggestively, that in order to benefit from the most striking improvements, today a consumer must still spend not only as much money as ever before, but, in many cases, must actually spend more. That doesn't describe the development curve of a market undergoing rapid competitive change.
I've said it strikes me as madness that image stabilization is still a niche feature, a full twenty years after Canon started trying to make a dent in this market. But image stabilization is just one, especially dramatic expression of the wider problem. I see that problem as being inadequate R&D, little meaningful competition, overconcentration of production in a few hands—and, as a result, stagnation and a creep toward something closer to connoisseurship than invention.
I know that sounds as if I were ignorantly sweeping aside all the interesting improvements the alpha companies have made since the late '90s. I don't mean to do that. But what I am trying to say is that, though we have gotten better versions of things we had already, we haven't gotten anything undeniably new.
(Nor have the biggest price reductions at the midrange come through technological change. They've come from shifting production to lower-wage countries and shifting sales models to direct-to-consumer.)
I honestly don't believe it's a sustainable situation. I know no one with the power or inclination to change this it is listening to what we say. But if they haven't already had these thoughts themselves, or if they go on on failing to act on them, they're likely to be in irreversible trouble in less than ten years. A company content to sit tight for too long can get hollowed out at frightening speed, like Kodak, Nokia, Polaroid, BlackBerry, and other companies, now only ghosts of themselves, that until recently straddled the world.
The Vectors do look imaginative and exciting, albeit at roughly $25,000.
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